On Tuesday, I was speaking to Harry Connick, Jr., which is something I do once every 59 years – just like clockwork. For much of our conversation, we were talking about the great New Orleans pianist James Booker because both Harry and I have indelible memories of the late wizard.

Connick, as some of you might know, was seven years old when he met Booker – who was a friend of his parents. By 12, Connick was taking piano lessons from Booker, which is rather like discovering in the third grade that you’re a sociopath and subsequently getting to undergo therapy with John Wayne Gacy. Okay, maybe that’s not the best comparison, but the point is, it’s good to learn from the best!

In any event, Connick studied with Booker for years – long enough to mentally appreciate how freakin’ accomplished his mentor was.

“He went from being this really nice guy who happened to play piano to ‘Wait a minute! How do I do that?!’ Connick remembered. "He’d show me stuff that, to this day, is very, very hard to do.”

Connick also re-emphasized what a truly kind person Booker was. Booker would always find a way to express marvel over Connick's playing. All these years later, you could still hear the amazement in Connick's voice as he laughed, "As though there was something James Booker could learn from me!"  

It's all very poignant because, by any estimation, Booker had a very melancholy and tragic life. It could not have been easy, at that time in the Deep South, to be, as Dr. John once said, “a one-eyed, gay, black junkie genius.” Hell, that combination wouldn't be easy ever -- for any reason.

Connick performs Saturday at Foxwoods.  By this point in his incredible and justifiably successful career, he has no shortage of material to fill a concert set list – particularly since, in 2013, he released two very fine new albums of original material, the funky, Mardi Gras-themed Smokey Mary and the melodic and reflective Every Man Should Know.*

It would be pretty cool if, perhaps inspired by our phone conversation, Connick reached back and decided to play such Booker-associated tunes as “Sunny Side of the Street,” “Junco Partner” or what must assuredly be the most darkly gorgeous version of “Angel Eyes” ever.

Oh – I almost forgot. What is my indelible recollection of James Booker?

Well, he was already dead. Regrettably, I never saw him perform.

However, some years ago, I decided I wanted to pay my respects by visiting Booker’s grave, which is located in Providence Memorial Park in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans. In a city renowned for its exotic graveyards stuffed with beautiful above-ground tombs, Providence Memorial is, to say the least, underwhelming.

Turns out Booker rests in a morgue-style shelf inset way up on a mausoleum wall. There are no carved marble angels, just letters that spell out:

JAMES CARROLL BOOKER, 111. This is supposed to convey that he was the third James Carroll Booker, following his father and his grandfather before. But the typeface of the letters makes it look like he was the hundred-and-eleventh James Carroll Booker. Or, hell, I dunno: maybe his ancestry is centipede-long and consists of a bloodline extremely devoted to the name “James Carroll.”

Underneath, it does say in terse understatement: THE PIANO PRINCE. That's something, I guess.

I suppose any visit to a hero’s grave is memorable. But the main reason I’ll never forget this is that, whilst gazing up at the crypt, I was unaware that I was standing in a pile of particularly vicious red ants. Within a few moments, I was ripped from my respectful reverie when the sensation like a thousand white-hot needlepoints was simultaneously jabbed into the top of my foot and up my ankle.

I’d been drinking a beer in remembrance of Booker, but, as I hopped away from the fiery pit and frantically swatted at the teeming insects, I was forced to pour the bulk of the Dixie over the swarm – hoping to either kill the bastards or at least get them drunk enough to stop stinging me.

I will always love the utterly unique music and artistry of James Carroll Booker the One-Hundred-and-Eleventh, and I wish I’d known him and could maybe have been his friend or at least thrown some cash in his tip jar during his legendary Monday night residency at the Maple Leaf Bar. (Probably my favorite Booker album, Spiders On the Keys, was recorded live at the Maple Leaf.)

But he DOES owe me a beer.

* If you've never seen Connick in concert, I strongly recommend going. Here's a review.